


Let It Burn

by SandwichesYumYum



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Complete, F/M, For Tamjlee and JustAGirl24
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 15:38:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3774127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandwichesYumYum/pseuds/SandwichesYumYum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth.  Herein lies an extremely unlikely ending, with my warmest regards to Tamjlee and JustAGirl24. :).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let It Burn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tamjlee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamjlee/gifts), [JustAGirl24](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAGirl24/gifts).



> This is a belated birthday gift for both Tamjlee and JustAGirl24, even if it is far more tardy for one than the other. But I would like to thank you both, for your varied and most welcome kindnesses. You are both awesome. :)
> 
> Disclaimer: I own it not.

 

LET IT BURN

 

"Brienne, let me help you." This is the first thing he's said that she has truly heard since they fled King's Landing, the sound of raucous laughter amongst those of the court and even from the smallfolk in the streets having never left her since.

"No. Just give me your dagger."

She ceases her attempts to rip the hideous silks binding her torso apart, the strength in the folds of the newly-made finery outmatching that remaining in her shaking, tired fingers. Wanting to remove the trappings of the wider world's final, bitter jest at her expense. 

The point of a short blade extends forth and she snatches it from Jaime before he comes any closer, moving further around the tree to keep out of sight. The finely honed metal slices into the pad of her thumb, but Brienne pays it no heed while she cuts frantically away at pale pink and yellow and green, all chosen by others to make her skin more sallow and carefully styled so she appears like a hog in girlish frippery.

_'Would that you had sewn a large silken sack, to cover her face as well.'_

The coldly spoken words of her new husband, echoing loudly throughout Baelor's Great Sept, wound her again as she remembers Pod, even Pod, nearly weeping in his amusement, so uncontrollably that he had been the first to leave that place of worship. And of her utter humiliation. She hears the huge doors being hauled open once more, by youthful hands she will ever consider dear, and only now do her own tears come, welling out of her in rasping sobs, the shock of having stood there for those dreadful, long minutes finally settling in. Of waiting for the surging barrage of scorn pouring from every gathered noble in the capital to subside before the ceremony could continue.

Jaime steps around gnarled, knotted bark and Brienne turns her back to him, holding the tattered remnants of the bodice to her front, but feeling every inch of her broad and mannish back, now bare to his scrutiny as soft material falls away. She raises the knuckles clasped around the dagger and holds them to her mouth to stifle her distress. Her nose is dripping, wet and running over her hand.

Brienne brings herself under some semblance of control as rapidly as she is able, only to realize that in her desperation to free herself of this cursed gown, that there is something she has forgot.  "Some clothes. Anything. I beg you, Ser, if you still have any regard for me at all -"

"Brienne, _stop_ this."

"No," she says over her shoulder. Sharply, sadly. "Get me clothes. _Please_."

Jaime is gone, though she can hear him muttering the gods only know what under his breath. Packs open and close whilst Brienne stands stock still, trying not to think, to _hurt_ , until some clothing is waved off to one side on an extended stump like a misshapen flag of truce. "Brienne-"

Again, she whips the items away from him, unwilling to be seen and equally unwilling to see him. "Leave me be."

She waits in a heavy, injured silence, refusing to look in his direction, and eventually he moves off again. Once she is sure Jaime is gone, she pulls wretchedly at the remains of the gown, cutting at it, sawing awkwardly into it where she has to. In the end, it all drops from her in a pitiful mass, in a foully soft swell at her feet. Brienne steps out of the pile in her blue shoes, stamping on it as she does so, trying to make it flat. To smother it.

She cannot bear to look upon her naked body with her own eyes, so cruelly has she been taunted on this day, so she scrambles into leather and thin wool, putting herself away from her own gaze as well as anybody else's.

That being done, she roughly gathers up the outer silks, which only yesterday were part of disparate, neatly folded bolts, kept in the chambers of the septas and their seamstresses. Brienne marches around the tree and drops them onto their small fire without hesitation. Jaime, sat as he is right by it, looks up at her with concern, or perhaps horror, as they billow about in heated air. She is simply beyond knowing what he is thinking anymore.

"Let it burn," Brienne bluntly tells him, paying the blaze no more attention when she goes to their small pile of packs, grabbing at blankets and a smaller roll to rest her head upon.

Then she takes the place she so often has when they've slept in the wilds together. Across the fire from Jaime. She sweeps her right foot from side to side, dislodging larger pebbles, kicking them away. She jabs her toe viciously at a small, raised mound of mud in the middle of the space to even it out, glad that there had only been time to match her ill-meant robes to some flat, modest shoes which will now be ruined too.

It is only when her blankets are laid down and Brienne stretches herself out under them that she looks again at Jaime.

He has picked up a long, thin stick and is teasing at the ends of her haphazardly flung wedding gown which stubbornly linger outside of the little fire, unburnt, folding them carefully into the flames. He does not seem happy. She watches him do so and shares in his unhappiness.

_It smells like scorched hair._

Jaime is staring doggedly at the stones surrounding the flames with a definite grimness, and it is one Brienne knows far too well, for all that today has given her good reason to doubt him.

_He saves that look for when he has made a sure mistake. And who could blame him?_

Brienne shifts under her blankets, blinking away her lack of sleep and the words of the needle-wielding septas who had been none too restrained when describing her form scathingly, throughout the whole of the previous night.

"I will not hold you to it, Jaime. I would not. You are free to leave me."

No matter what he would say of her now, no matter what he _has_ said, these are words he truly deserves. That he has earned, in their years of shared blood and war. In their older kinship, forged in battle.

Though she spoke gently, her husband of but a few hours is called back as if from far away.  

Yet he just glares at her, at the last weak flailings and flappings of miniscule scraps of her wedding gown as they dance upwards in the heat, aglow in the fire between them, and then at her once more. He even goes so far as to wave the fire-blackened stick in her direction. "Have you not heard a _single_ word I've said since we left that bloody place, Brienne?"

There is harshness in his words, but also kindness as he leans sideways, to avoid the rising heat and catch her gaze fully. It is completely at odds with her recent experiences of him. "Over this last fortnight, you have said quite enough," Brienne says, her walls high, her tone hard. For she _had_ tried to stop listening. She could bear it no more, some days ago.

"For which I am almost sorry," Jaime says, rising to his feet with his own blankets clutched in his only hand. He steps about the fire and drops them next to her own, but Brienne simply can't be that close to him now, so as he sits, she stands.

"Almost," she mutters sullenly, only to have her movement away checked before it begins by a bare stump brushing at the side of her calf.

"Stay, Brienne. And _listen_ to me. _Please_." It is his 'please', much like her own earlier one, that stills her, though she will not give in to it very easily. Instead, she draws herself up to her fullest height and peers down at him, knowing her frown is as ugly as any of the farmyard animals he has loudly compared her unfavourably to of late. She folds her arms across her chest.

Jaime doesn't seem to care, looking at her with an honest openness that has been lacking since their approach to the capital, which saw him becoming edgy and withdrawn. "It wouldn't have been much of a punishment had they known that this was all I wanted, would it? What I hope, I believe, we both wanted?"

"What?" she asks, even if it merely escapes her as the smallest exhalation, overcome as it is by a nearly painful and overpowering blooming of something very much other than despair in her chest. It steals her breath, so different is it to the grind of misery that had recently taken such a hold of her.

 _"Think_ , Brienne," Jaime insists, though she finds she cannot. "The Kingslayer had to be put in his place. The Maid of Tarth, the woman who dared to go to war, had to be firmly put back in hers. Do you think that Stannis wants either of us roaming free around Westeros?" He pats firmly at the ground between himself and the fire and Brienne lowers herself back down to it warily, folding her leather-clad legs in and watching the light from the flames flicker on the gold thread of his finery, still as beautifully garbed as she was not for what passed for their being wed. "It's bad enough for me. I make kings nervous and I have a patchy history with Stannis at best. But he has ended my family line today. The name Lannister is carried by no more males of note. It is dead. I am done, and have been made a fool of to boot." He pauses, his face dark. "For you, he is much more dangerous. You _know_ he killed his brother. Our service in the cause of men as the war drew to a close bought us time, Brienne, but not much of that and little else. We had to get _out_ , before it was gone." Jaime nurses the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, laughing to himself as if in nervousness, only to look back to her, his eyes now bleak. "It's only a damned wonder to me that you didn't skewer him whilst we were there. Or that he didn't end _you_."

For all of the newly found hope welling within her, Brienne finds her thoughts shifting from Jaime to Stannis, and then to Renly. Of how her grief had poured out of her in a loud, brutish torrent as he died in her arms, the feel of his lifeblood on her warm and sticky. But that wail of purest anguish within is quietened; not disappeared, but made fainter, softened by all that has happened since. She shakes her head sadly. "What would be the point of vengeance now? There are no other kings left. Nor queens. Killing Stannis would only lead to more chaos. More death. There has been enough of it for everyone."

There is a strange moment as she looks at Jaime, and Brienne wonders if he ever thinks as she is doing now. She has the sensation of their being in a tub once more, but the warmth circling her, up to her waist, grows colder, and the surface of it does not ripple, nor does it lap at her skin; for this bath is made of the blood of the dead. A motionless lake, all life in it gone.

If he sees anything of it in her, Jaime does not say, for all that there is a measure of melancholy in him when he says, "That is true." Yet then he leans towards her, his features set with determination. "I know these last days have pained you, Brienne, but neither of us were safe. Things will only worsen there now, as the Red Woman tightens her grip on the court. It won't be long before she starts up her fires again and we could not be there for their lighting. She would have put us in them." But then the hardness eases, for just a moment. "And King's Landing is the only place in the world where I think you are still out of your depth." The fondness in that is gone quickly and he reaches for her, only to pull his hand back as soon as it ventures near, uncertain. "I did ask you if you trusted me, when we arrived there."

He may have meant it then, and even now, but it doesn't change everything Brienne has had to endure since. "And I _did_ , Jaime. But you grew harsher." She drags her knees up and drops her forehead onto them, speaking quietly. "And today was too much. It was..."

Her voice falls raggedly away, the trial of these recent and public abasements heavy upon her. More so than a thrown rose in front of her father, or a lifetime of harsh words from others. Because they came from Jaime. But then it is he who gently lifts the side of her chin, placing it with care where her brow was rested. And there is something like regret in him when he does not attempt to deny what he has done."It was all of your worst dreams come true.”

Brienne again feels the burn of approaching tears, but fights them, holding onto the few, remaining scraps of her dignity. "Yes."

She sees him wait for her to turn her quiet discomposure into something more full of ease before speaking again. He does so with absolute care. "Brienne of Tarth. I have wanted you for my wife for some time now and, if I'm not mistaken, the idea of my being your husband is not one you find repugnant?"

She reaches for his hand, which still hovers in the air between them. "No. It is not." She brushes her fingers over his, only to let them drop away. " _Was_ not."

He nods, clearly shaken, and his jaw twitches in uncertainty before he can utter another word. "I see. Still, I was hoping we could call today a bad beginning to something that might be better? If you will have me?"

He is so unlike himself, spilling out silent fear of her rejection of an offer she can hardly believe she is hearing at all. So she laughs, too loudly. It sounds harsh, even to her own ears. "If I will have _you_?" The notion of his truly wanting such a fate is absurd to her, though it has been her dearest wish for longer than she can now remember.

"Yes, Brienne. If you will have me." Hope seems to waver in him, turning into something like regret. "It is hardly as if you were given a real choice in this, is it?"

She makes no play in her words. They are beyond that now, and she was ever poor at it. "I was _not_." Yet she watches him and can see his misgivings about his actions as clear as if they were etched into the finest of glass; though knowing him so well, she doubts she will ever hear an outright apology. And if the skin of her face still feels tight, where her tears were so recently given to flowing, it is countered by her husband looking as he never has before, to her eyes. Brienne has seen him in the depths of despair, in the wild thrall of victory and, she had believed, everything inbetween. Yet now he seems small, his shoulders hunched as he waits to hear what Tarth holds for him. For _them._ And it is that which allows her to speak; it lets her set aside everything that had come to pass in King’s Landing and re-take her grasp on the truth of the trust they had built with such difficulty over the years before. “But I would have you for my husband, Jaime.” She finally holds his hand entire, but if Jaime nearly gasps in relief at the gesture, it is poor to her ears, as she finds herself again staring at how her fingers are longer and wider than his. Her doubts roar back. “If you-”

She does not get to think a single word between her stuttering beginning and his own fingers being wrenched from hers and being softly placed over her lips. “Stop that. All I wanted, Brienne.” He brushes his thumb over the tip of her nose, his eyes blazing with open honesty.“All I wanted. Remember that. _You_.”

There is a moment, a mere beat of a heart after rough skin travels over her broken features, before the Jaime she knows all too well comes back, his fears banished. Yet despite everything, Brienne will never see him the same way again. She can only love him more, having glimpsed, if only briefly, the man who only ever wanted to give his care freely and completely. That he would do so for her feels like a gift.

_A debt that I am incapable of repaying. I am not enough. I have never been enough._

Even as she mulls over it, Jaime pulls himself away, but he does not go far, simply laying himself out on the ground again. “So come here.”He is sure now, where she is not, his booted heel beating three times against the hardening mud beneath them.“It isn't much of a marriage bed, I'll grant you, but-”

“Here? Now?” Even Brienne can hear the panic in her voice. It is all too soon. Too swift.

Jaime pauses, watching her with care. “No,” he then smiles, knowing her and excusing her alarm with a reason of his own.“I'm old and so we should probably wait until we have a bed of feathers under our backs. Or at least one of straw. If memory serves, there is an inn a day or so away which is kept in fair order.” He idly stretches both of his arms out to his sides.“But I'd like to hold my new wife for a while.” An eyebrow arches.“She's been sobbing in her unhappiness, you know.”

Brienne is grateful for his patience as a husband, though whatever happens, she thinks there could be talk of this day between them, for some years hence. “She is not _quite_ so unhappy now,” she tells him.

Jaime lifts his arms at the elbows, and drops them loosely back down. “Then come here.”

Brienne goes to him, almost faltering as she stretches herself out on the ground at his side, her head on his shoulder and his toes knocking on her shins. This is not wholly new. In the true depths of winter, she had found that there was no choice but to agree to Jaime’s rare suggestions that they should share their blankets during a handful of nights, to survive the cold. However, she is tense as she awkwardly rests her arm across them both. But then a thought occurs to her. “Which inn did you mean, Jaime?”

His face lifts for a moment to look at her, his eyes almost shutting as he struggles to remember. “I’m not sure what it was called, Brienne. So many bloody inns.” He drops his head back again with a sigh. “But the innkeep was the hairiest man I’ve ever seen, except for the top of his head, which was all pale skin.”

“Thick, red hair? Even on his arms? Right down to his wrists?”

“Yes.”

She quickly turns fully onto her side, propping her chin on his fine silks with a small grin. “I know that inn. Jaime, it is at the Sign of the Hanged Man.”

Low laughter rumbles through Jaime, and it feels good against her. “That sounds perfect for us, wench.”

She is about to object to his continued use of that name on this day, for all that she will never admit that she has grown so well used to it and would miss it, were it gone, when he rolls onto _his_ side to face her, making sure that her head does not fall away with too great a thump. He then pushes himself up, leaning on his left hand as he taps his stump against the loose material at her waist. “Is that blood from your thumb, Brienne?”

She stares first at the shallow cut on the pad of her thumb, on which her blood is drying, and then to her shirt, which is indeed showing signs of it. “It is likely.”

“No. I don't think it is.” Scarred skin slides up from her waist, taking her loose clothing with it.

“Jaime, what are you doing?”

“Making sure you haven't cut yourself open.” Brienne knows full well that Jaime has seen her thighs, her legs and arms, her stomach, her back and even her pitiful teats; there is no mystery left in her, nor in him, their checking each other’s injuries having become commonplace after battle. So despite her breath catching in her chest, she treats it just the same as folds stop rising and a short scratch is revealed. “See? It is nothing,” she tells him.

“I know.” They both peer at the light mark bared on her side now, on her lowest rib; no longer bleeding, but a clear signal of the distress Brienne has suffered.

“Jaime. It is nothing,” she insists once more.

He doesn’t reply, simply looking at her skin in silence for so long that she starts to feel uncomfortable under his scrutiny, for this is _not_ the same as before. She opens her mouth to speak, but as she does, Jaime moves himself, ducking his head to press his lips softly to the scratch. She gasps at the gesture, at the sensation of his hair cascading over her skin and even at the feel of his forearm gently nudging at the cloth, when he covers her again. Her heart is thudding so hard that she is sure she can hear it when Jaime lays himself back down at her side, his smile one she has never seen as he asks,“May I suggest that the next time your husband offers to help you out of your clothes, you accept instead of resorting to the blade?”

“I -,” she starts to protest, as she has to so many of his jests over the years. But he is not mocking her now and even if his question was lightly spoken, his eyes show the seriousness behind it. Still, she has to look away from him, for this is all too new to her, so she simply says, “Yes.”

It surprises her that he fails to speak then. She would expect Jaime to tease or even to crow about it, yet he does not, instead shifting them both about until he is laying on his back, her head returned to his shoulder. She can feel him smiling against her forehead and can hear his breathing, deep and clear in his chest. And she allows herself to notice things she had pushed aside as best she could before, if never with any real success. The way the muscles in his neck move as he swallows, and his scent. That gives her pause, for he smells as if he has taken only a little wine today, though his actions earlier had seemed to belong to a man who had taken a swim in a cask or two.

 _My husband, the liar._ There is no real rancour in the thought, however, for he had known better than she how to survive the coming firestorm, for all that it involved him risking them both. And she does not see him ever doing so again. She tugs gently at a silken seam on his chest, grateful that they are away from the scheming of the capital for good.

“This is better,” Jaime says, seemingly stirred to life by her fingers.

“Yes.”

But then he nudges her head back a touch with his stump so that he can see her face, and he grins freely. “Gods, Stannis is such a dull stick of a man, isn't he?”

“Don't, Jaime. Today. _Last night_. It was awful.”

Brienne can see he thinks it too. And truly, after weeks of humiliating chill from everyone in King’s Landing, of her being relegated to sit with the smallfolk at meals, of her being called every foul name imaginable, their last night as the guests of the new king had been the worst of them all.

As well as treating her poorly, Jaime had spent their time there growing increasingly bold in his belittling ‘praise’ of the new ruler. Brienne had thought him gone out of his wits, even if it is now obvious that he had been pushing Stannis to deal with them before the burnings began again. It had been a drunkenly raised goblet and a riotously well-received _‘to the rightful king - but only because all the others are dead!_ ’ which broke Stannis’ patience, leading to him singling Brienne out.

 _'She remains a maid, which_ _will not_ _surprise anyone here, I believe._ _’_ So Stannis had loudly announced over some roasted partridge. He had been speaking to Jaime, but purposefully demeaning _her_ in front of the whole host.Brienne had been unable to look up from her hands, clenched together as they were in her lap, but she thinks she can see Jaime remembering the insult himself now, his eyes narrowed and grim. Yet the King was not done with either of them. ‘ _But you might as well marry the one they call your whore and take_ her _name. We'll see to that come the morning. Then go and secure her tiny rock in the sea, if you can, though as I hear it you'll find little enough of it still standing. The price of a war that ended justly, I'm sure you understand.'_ Then the Red Woman had whispered her poison in his ear and Stannis had not given a moment's thought before adding, ' _And Ser Jaime? Don't come back. Either of you. On pain of death.'_

Jaime drags his nose lightly against her own and it is somehow a thing of comfort to her. “It was dreadful, but it had to be done, Brienne,” he says.“For us both. They couldn't kill us yet, but they would have done, given the chance. And if they could not do that, they would at least see us both gone and utterly miserable. It was best they thought we would loathe being chained together for the rest of our lives.” If her husband looks sorry for her pains, and that he does, he also appears rather pleased with himself.

“I know that _now_. You could have told me, Jaime,” she chides.

“No, I couldn’t,” he smiles at her fondly.“You are still the worst liar I've ever encountered and lest we forget, I’ve now met Maester Samwell.”

“Pod is just as bad and I have the feeling you trusted him,” Brienne mutters, her voice fading into sadness as she recalls the Great Sept. “He laughed so much today.”

Jaime laughs then, but not at her. This laugh has ever been the one he reserves for himself. “In all honesty, Brienne, I was _terrified_. I thought he’d ruined it. I was worried I'd overplayed my hand with the sack comment, but then he started rolling about and I was certain Stannis wouldn't believe it.” He presses his lips to her forehead, almost absently, and the ease in it, the lack of hesitation, fills her with warmth.“You see, somebody had to go and get our horses.” Green eyes meet her own, with a hint of mirth still shining.“Oh, you didn't want to stay for the feast, did you?”

“No.” She rises slightly and shoves at his chest, if with no real effort. “You _lied_ to me, Jaime.”

“I lied to _everyone_ , Brienne,” he admits, unashamed of the fact.“I lied for all I was worth. It was for a good cause. Besides, I was still lawfully a Lannister then and everybody knows that Lannisters will lie, just to get what they want for supper. They're a dreadful family. Or at least, they were.”

Brienne settles her head back down nearer to Jaime’s and resumes her small, unthinking fiddling with his fine silks. “So I've heard. Husband,” she whispers quietly.“I never thought to have one.”

“Yet here we are,” Jaime says, leaning in and kissing her. Though it is not swiftly or harshly done, it takes Brienne entirely off-guard, and she is frozen in place; her eyes wide open as his fall closed and his mouth brushes softly over hers. But then he pulls back and stares at her with concern. “Is this too soon for you, Brienne?”

She cannot fathom why he would want this at all, so certain is she that her features, never her saving grace, must be swollen from her tears and more mottled with redness than he will ever have seen before this day. Yet his words are given deeply, with a real sense of need, and there is nothing approaching revulsion in him. Quite the opposite. So she takes a nervous breath and tells him, “No, Jaime. It is not.”

He smiles and kisses her again, and if Jaime has been following her for years, it is her turn now, if only for a while. At first, she cannot bring herself to close her eyes again, fascinated as she is by the gentleness that overtakes his face, all of the sharp arrogance in it gone. But she moves her lips against his feebly, she is sure of it, which is only confirmed when she finds herself suddenly gazing into bright green.

Brienne slams her eyes firmly shut, almost like a stubborn babe-in-arms, and she feels silent amusement rumble through Jaime; though his mouth has not left hers and starts moving again as quickly as it had halted.

Yet it is in this darkness that she comes to see. Without the distraction of sight, it slowly becomes a game, of sorts, or even a dance with steps to be learned, as she meets the pressure of his lips with her own, working with or against him.

And once her confusion at knowing so little begins to wither, it becomes easier, though she remains clumsy as she does not know how to stop them clashing noses. Jaime does not seem to mind though, each small bump bringing forth a smile she can feel on her skin.

So she lets herself start to play, his short beard now scratching more at her lips as well as her chin as she finds her way from one corner of his mouth to the other.

Just as she reaches it, she feels the touch of his tongue, and she retreats a little, regarding him warily. For once, Jaime keeps quiet, but he runs the tip of it between his teeth and looks at her in a way she has seen in the past. Brienne’s husband knows her very well indeed, for she will not back down, if he has set her a challenge to be met.

She nods surely, he comes closer, and the kisses resume, moving beyond the chaste dreams of her youth, but not for the worse. For now she can taste Jaime, the faint hint of this morning’s wine on his lips forgotten, overridden by the taste of him. It gets better when their tongues flicker against one another, at first tentatively but then with increasing haste. It is about then that a warmth truly begins to weave its way through Brienne, leaving her skin humming and her muscles crying out for something new in its wake. And just a few moments of lips left touching, with all attention being poured into the meeting of tongues, is enough to make Brienne understand that this is no dance at all.

She turns her head and mutters against his cheek, “It is like fighting, without the hurt.”

Jaime starts against her, and gazes at her curiously for almost too long. Perhaps Brienne is wrong, but she is a warrior and knows little else. But then Jaime begins to press gentle kisses along her jaw, almost talking his way across her face. “I once had a similar thought when we were fighting, Brienne.” Then he whispers quietly into her ear, “But not about _kissing_.” His lips fall to her neck, just beneath her ear, and whether it is his words, so choked with the idea of what is yet to come for them both, or the sensation of his mouth and hair and beard brushing against her, she does not know; but the warmth Brienne has been nursing within her flares into life, sudden and bright. It courses through her body, forcing a soft, ragged cry from her, though it centres and settles swiftly into an insistent thrum between her legs, the pleasure found sweet, but somehow not quite yet enough.

Jaime looks at her again, so intensely now it is as if he is trying to brand this moment into his memory. “We are only just beginning,” he tells Brienne, and it feels like a promise. She wants to believe it, though she hardly knows what to think.

She lifts her hand to his face, only seeing that it trembles when she rests it against his cheek. “Your eyes are darker, Jaime.”

“Yours are too, Brienne.”

“Our voices...” she mutters, though her own leaves her as she hears how different she sounds to her own ears, how her words are thick in her throat.

Jaime grins slowly and bites his lip.

Brienne starts to move her head, to kiss him again, but not being aware if she is supposed to ask, or do, or if she should be wanting to at all, she merely looks away instead.

“More, Brienne?” His voice is rough, yet to her like honey. “Come now, you need not be shy with _me_.” His lips press to her damaged cheek. “Care to dance, sweetling?” Those words call her back, though she cannot bring herself to reply when she feels herself flushing at that question being given more meaning than she had ever been aware it held. So Brienne shuts her eyes once more, but her unseeing attempt to find his mouth fails, her lips colliding with the bristles of his beard. If she feels awkward, however, Jaime gives her no time to dwell upon it. Her willingness to try seems to find his approval, and Brienne is twisted nearly onto her back as her meets her again; with what she feels more than hears as a growl in his throat and a firmness she can’t resist greeting with her own.

Now she is smiling with him, against him, for despite her womanly callowness, this is the Jaime she knows best. She cannot tell how long they lie there, grappling in this kindest of battles which seems only intended to make heat in them both. But dance they do, and Brienne is lost in the weight of him, sprawled across her chest, and the rush of want his mouth brings that sets her alive from her fingertips to deep within her belly, making her thighs twitch. Flowing over these, filling the air, are the sounds they make; his low, filled with clear need, and hers the longing sort she thought beyond her, saved for her most childish imaginings and the beautiful maidens in songs alone.

It is only when Brienne comes to realize she is now fully pressed into the ground beneath them, running her fingers desperately over Jaime’s back, and her hips are starting to lift and twist of their own accord, seeking to have him nearer, that she can tear her lips away from his, thinking herself too wanton.

Yet even whilst Brienne is unsure of what he will think of her, the sensation of their chests, now pressed together, both of them heaving in rapid breaths, still builds more want within her. But at least this moment spared gives her the chance to see what she should have noticed before.

Jaime is not wholly atop her, and is leaning far too much on his damaged limb. “Jaime,” Brienne whispers. “Your arm?”

Jaime presses a fleeting kiss to her lips, but then grunts and rolls a little way away from her, back onto his side. He stretches his right arm into the air with a grimace. “Mayhaps we are too eager.”

“Do you not want me?” These poor, small words seem to trip out of Brienne’s mouth before she can begin to think them and she is ashamed even as they do so.

Yet Jaime seems to understand that her fears are not gone, that some kisses by a fireside, however much they have opened her eyes and made her love him more, cannot erase a lifetime of doubt.

He drops his handless arm to her waist, tugging at it, encouraging her to turn to face him. She does so nervously, knowing all too well she has just painted herself a fool. 

 _“_ _Yes_ , Brienne,” Jaime says, sparing her no great time to think further as that scarred, sore limb slips around to her back and jolts her towards him with no lack of strength, in spite of his missing hand. “I do.” Brienne follows his movement willingly and finds herself pressed fully against Jaime, from head to toe. It merely takes one gentle press of his hips, accompanied by a moan of unsated need from them both, for him to make his point clear.  “But I believe that you, of _all_ women,” he whispers lowly, shifting himself away a touch, “my honourable Lady Brienne of Tarth, deserve better than mud for your bedding.” He gifts one more kiss to her lips, softer and lingering. But then he turns his face to the sky above. “And I don't think we'll be alone for the time we need.” His face falls blank, and Brienne, knowing him so well, sees that he is listening.That he can at all seems extraordinary to her, but Jaime continues, and not without frustration. “I'm expecting your squire to arrive soon.” It takes Brienne a few moments to shake away her narrower, more selfish thoughts to find she can now hear the signs of an approach too. Jaime looks at her, with both humour and regret.“Speak of the Stranger...”

They struggle ungracefully up out of their tangle of limbs to sit side by side whilst twigs crack under overgrown feet at the ends of spindly legs and Pod emerges into the small clearing, grasping the reins of a small packhorse. The young man says nothing, leading the heavily burdened animal over to their other mounts and securing it. Brienne doesn't fail to notice Jaime dragging a blanket over his lap with a mildly guttural sigh when Pod's attention is elsewhere, as he loosens the straps to some of their baggage, though her husband merely shrugs at her with a wry grin; clearly as relieved that their friend has arrived safely as he is frustrated that they are no longer alone.

That relief is short-lived, however, when the squire himself, having pulled a small sack from his supplies, comes over and scowls, aiming a light kick at Jaime's leg. "That is for your good lady wife, Ser," he scolds, though Jaime only reacts with an amused grunt, watching Pod move around to her side. "I'm sorry, my Lady Brienne. For my actions in the sept today," Pod says to her, full of contrition.

Brienne simply smiles up at him. "Don't be, Pod. I understand them now."

"Did you travel alone?" Jaime asks, his voice still laced with hoarseness.

"No," Pod says, "Septa Donyse packed Lady Brienne's things and she came with four of her women, as she had asked. They are resting a ways back, at the hearth of some smallfolk."

 _The septas?_ "What?"

"Brienne, it was my doing," Jaime explains. "Her brusqueness with you last night was done at my ordering. I have known of her for some years. She is a woman of good repute and she needed to get out of the city too. I said we would consider giving her a place on Tarth, but that it was up to you."

Brienne frowns, thinking of how changed Septa Donyse had been last evening; and also that it may be some time before she will let her new husband entirely forget just how hard he had plotted to have her be miserable, come the day they were wed. "She can come. Just five, Pod?"

"Six," he ruefully admits. "The septa made up her group of five, as she was bid, but then Septon Willem tagged along. He said if we left him behind, he would tell Stannis we were saving servants of the Seven from the fires of R'hllor." Even Brienne knows that to be a flawed threat, but it is done and she cannot be angry with Pod for believing a septon.

"Which one was Willem?" Jaime asks.

Pod scowls down at his feet unhappily, answering with some embarrassment. "The one who called Lady Brienne an ape. In the Great Sept."

"Why don't we just send him back?" Jaime's words are harsh.

"He is still a man of the Gods, Jaime," Brienne says. "Would you throw him into the fire yourself?"

"I would consider it." She can tell that he means it.

"We cannot, Jaime." Brienne shrugs up at Pod. "He can come too, but he'll have to earn his keep."

"And find some manners," Jaime adds, looking at her in question. "If he doesn't, can he accidentally fall overboard when we go to ship?"

_"Jaime."_

"It will be as you say, Brienne," he reassures her, turning his attention back to Pod. "We'll go to them, in a few hours. What did our new king make of our departure?" Jaime asks.

"I told him you were following his orders to the letter. He seemed to accept it," Pod tells them with a worried frown, "though not until he spoke to the Lady Melisandre. But I don't think we will be sought out for missing the feast." He holds out the sack to her in plaintive offering. "And I have this. The cooks felt sorry for you."

Brienne ignores the unwelcome pang caused by the thought of pity from those she does not even know and takes the bag. She looks into it, finding she has to knock away a certain Kingslayer's fingers the very moment she mutters, "There's mutton _and_ chicken in here, I think. Sit down, Pod. Have you eaten?"

At his shaken head, she begins to share out the meats and this feels much as things had been on the road in the months leading up to King's Landing, though perhaps the food was not so rich then.

"Is there any mustard?" Jaime enquires and Brienne fumbles blindly in the corners of the sack for some. It is only recently that she has almost come to believe that Jaime would spend a moment seriously considering bartering away his other hand if he could secure enough of it to last for the rest of his life. She had been blind to this preference of his for so long, his access to it having been lacking in their travels.

"Yes," she says, pulling a small, hard round of it out to his obvious joy. All further searching proves fruitless. "But I can't see any vinegar or honey."

Pod is already back on his feet. "There is some wine!"

They watch him traipse over to the small horse which had borne what they need to this place. Jaime nudges her shoulder with his own as Pod produces a couple of wineskins. "This has to be better than being back there."

"I should think anything would be," Brienne agrees, dropping the mustard ball onto the slice of thick mutton which is sat in his outstretched palm. She winces at the grease surely soaking into his fine, silken breeches from the leg of chicken abandoned there, wondering how they will ever get it out, only to start in alarm as a lone thumb starts to crush the whole mustard ball. "Don't use it all, Jaime," she warns, snatching what she can back from him. "It might be a while before we can get any more."

Pod arrives back at the fire and pours a drop of wine onto the muttton Jaime is holding out. Young fingers drop the opened skin and then he nods respectfully, shifting away with his chicken leg, putting the flames between himself and them. Jaime rolls the slice in his hand to turn solid lump of mustard into paste, looking at her all the while. "Just how bad _are_ things on Tarth, wife?"

She initially blinks at that final, offered word, the description what she now is merely beginning to settle into her, only to feel her eyebrows gather at thoughts of what awaits them when they make it home. "Bad. We may end up tilling fields alongside the smallfolk ourselves, at first."

"Pity I only have the one hand."

Jaime tears off a bite of mutton with his teeth and contentedly chews on it, his eyes narrowed slits of green, unmoved from her features and far too knowing after his saying so. He may jest, but Brienne sees they both fear what is ahead of them. It will be a trial of a different sort, and one that they are unsuited to, being as they both believe themselves made for war; a path on which they may fail badly. Yet it is not happening today. She takes the time to build a suitable reply. Jaime has always been more swift with his words than she. "I could always yoke you to a plough. I believe it might be your turn to be a beast of burden." She gives the improbable suggestion the edge of seriousness it wholly merits, given all the things she has heard him say of her over recent days.

He knows her too well and doesn't believe it. "Words are wind, Brienne."

Now she is quicker. And blunter. "As the 'ugliest mule in all of Westeros', amongst other things, I beg to differ, husband."

Jaime swallows his mutton with difficulty and proceeds to smile at her winningly as he can. "Will you ever be able to forgive me?"

"I'll consider it," she says, somehow unable to resist the sudden and overwhelming temptation to lean in and press her nervous mouth, made instantly dry at the thought of her just doing so, faintly to that part of his beard sat just behind his chin, which has been grey since she first saw him, in a dirty cell under the power of the Stark family. When everything was different. Because she can. He is her husband, and that part of him has taunted her for years. Since long before they ever had any regard for one another.

Jaime says nothing in response to the gesture, his face made pale in the firelight and still as stone by it and she cannot look at him again. So she turns to the flames instead and thinks that their moving along in a few hours will be needful, just to make sure they are safe from any possible pursuers.

But then heavily scarred skin slowly glides over her arm and soft lips, far softer than hers, brush against her own jaw in the same place on her, no more forcefully than she had with his.

Her distrust and unhappiness are already fading away, but Brienne doesn't let go of what she is. That would not be possible. Not even Jaime can make her what she is not.

But he can whisper, 'I wish you didn't have a squire, wench," for all that they each know they wouldn't be sitting here now, were it otherwise. They both strain to see Pod through the dancing flames as he kicks at the ground in his own practised way. He has always been fussier than Jaime when it comes to sleeping on bare ground, for the bleak dreams which often assail him mean it is harder for him to find his rest. Yet given that he's taking her husband's place across the fire, Brienne will not complain.

She looks at Jaime. "I don't. I have a Pod, which I think to be better, do you not?"

Jaime laughs and the young man himself grins as he drops himself into his place and stretches out by the flames; pulling thick wool about him and chewing eagerly on his chicken. They finish eating in relative quiet, all three of them content and given to smiling at each other in between morsels. Pod finishes his meal first and with a restful sigh, deliberately rolls to face away from the fire. From them.

As Brienne, who has ever been the slowest of them in eating, works through her slice of mutton, Jaime keeps nudging her, wordlessly urging her to hurry. In the end she pushes him back and he tips over to the ground with a gentle thump. He spends the next few moments mutely feigning dreadful injury and outrage, but the very moment she is done, he pulls her easily down with him under their blankets, not to a bedding, but to a marriage bed of sorts. They hold each other on cold ground and lips play in silence, lingering but restrained, waiting for the time, a day or so hence, when they can be alone and closer. Together.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I must also thank Nurdles, Coraleeveritas, ikkiM and RoseHeart for their differing and wonderful approaches to support and input as I dragged this together. Throughout the process, I have been tricksy and prone to being all 'bleurgh', for reasons which I still haven't made clear to everyone. You dear people didn't even ask me to, when I hadn't to yourselves, and were all brilliant nonetheless, even when I was most troublesome and 'meh'. I could not have done this without you. I am truly grateful for your friendship and your time. Please have all of my biscuits. ;)


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